In a sense, moral actions have no agents, and moral propositions have no authors (speakers, thinkers). Rather, the moral action is the action through which an agent first originates. A moral proposition is that through which a mind is created.

How can moral actions and propositions have no agents in any sense? I can see how you can say that taking moral action is a concomitant with agency (you can't have one without the other, or at least the potential of the other) but how can you say action precedes agency? Or that a moral proposition creates the mind? At best, it seems to me, you are offering us a poetic way of speaking which has some ability to feel inspirational but lacks explanatory potential. Did you, in fact, mean to suggest the above statements were explanatory in some sense? Or were they mainly meant to serve as a kind of metaphor evoking the feel of an insightful reversal of our usual way of thinking about this?

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reshef

12/23/2013 12:02:14 am

I do take what I say to be explanatory in some sense. Very much so. But I’m not sure this contradicts the other alternative you mention. And that’s because I’m not sure what insight you think may come from a reversal of our usual way of thinking about the relations between agent and action, or thinker and proposition. Do you really think any insight can come from this reversal? Do you think the second alternative you offer me is really viable?

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Stuart W. Mirsky

12/23/2013 01:00:38 am

It seems to me that we define actions, understand them, that is, in terms of agency. If that's so, and I don't see how it can be otherwise, then you have to have whatever it is that makes an agent in place to have an action.

Of course we can use "action" in more than one way. While the present context and the usual usage, I think, imply that it takes intentional entities (including thinking people) to perform actions, we can also speak of things like the action of the wind on the trees, the waves on the shore or the storm on the sea, and so forth. But even if we construe "action" in this more general sense (i.e., to exclude intentionality) we don't get, by the occurrence of such an action, an agent.

Again "agent" can be used in a broader sense, including any causative entity in a series of events (like an agent of change added to a solution in a chemistry beaker) or as a representative of some larger cause or institution ("an agent of the government"), in the sense in which it's relevant here, as one important element in a morally valued action, it seems to me that we don't get agency from the occurrence of the action but vice versa.

Now perhaps I am being too literal here and you only mean to say something like the two (moral actions and agents) cannot be separated and with that I'm inclined to agree. But it seems to me that a thinking, intentional agent is a precursor to moral action in an ontological sense. You MUST have intentional agency (and so an agent in this sense!) to have moral behavior though just having intentional agency is no guarantor of moral behaviors. Many an intentional actor has been known to act without regard to moral concerns (not necessarily immorally, which is still moral albeit in the reverse, but amorally).

Perhaps you only mean the potential or capacity to be an intentional agent is only and fully realized by the taking of moral action? If that's so, I think we'd be in agreement but then I would say that we have not got a real explanation of the relationship between moral behaviors and the initiators/performers of such behaviors.

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Stuart W. Mirsky

12/23/2013 01:04:22 am

Ah, geez, I forgot about the peculiarity of this site. It gives an error message and asks you to try again after you press the submit button. Since it does that each time, even after each re-submit, you can get the kind of multiple messages as above. Please forgive the triple play and feel free to eliminate two out of three. I think the last one I sent was the best version since I made a few changes it before trying to correct respond to the error message for the third time!

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reshef

12/23/2013 07:29:42 am

Thanks Stuart,

What you suggest towards the end sounds somewhat like what I would want to say. You put it this way: “the potential or capacity to be an intentional agent is only and fully realized by the taking of moral action.”

I want to say something a bit different: I would talk not so much of realizing an existing potential, but of acquiring a potential—becoming an agent via moral action, or starting to become one. It is like discovering something and growing into it. That’s what discovering a moral truth is like.

But the important thing is that the moral truth is there before we can think it. And likewise, the moral action is there before it can be an action for us. And this is part of the discovery: In grasping the moral truth, we discover action, without yet having the appropriate agency for it; we discover truth, without yet having the mind to grasp it.

And the really bizarre thing is that even though it is so foreign to us, it strikes us as the only place we can possibly go.

Interesting. But what would we call a moral truth on this view? Is it things like "thou shalt not kill" or bear false witness or covet thy neighbor's wife? Or is it something more basic than such precepts, from which they could be derived? Or is it more like just realizing something and knowing it when we do? I find your area of interest to be mine as well and I have been kicking around the same kind of issues though I am not always sure I've got enough of a handle on them. Your formulation looks interesting but I am not yet sure what to make of it. In fact I wouldn't know how to make anything of it unless it seemed to me to present what is, in your words, moral truth or, as I would tend to put it, morally good, or at least a means of discovering this for myself. Are you moving in this direction then?

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reshef

12/24/2013 08:25:36 pm

Stuart,

I fear I do not understand. – Mainly in the sense that I don’t understand why you are asking.

So far I’m committed to this: In the sense of the expressions I’m using (I’m not putting forward a view, by the way, but only clarifying a sense) a moral truth is that which behaves in the way I described. E.g. it is something discovering which is also discovering that one does not have the mind—theoretically, or practically—to think or act it. – But this is probably not what you want to know, because I’ve already said that.

If examples can help (though I don’t know how), ‘Thou shall not kill’ may very well be a moral truth. Whether it is depends on what role it plays in one’s mental-spiritual life—i.e. on how one takes it in. If one already has the mind to think it, then for them it is not a moral truth. I wrote about a related issue some here:
http://reshefagamsegal.weebly.com/1/post/2013/02/february-27th-2013.html
The discussion that followed helped me.

"'Thou shall not kill’ may very well be a moral truth. Whether it is depends on what role it plays in one’s mental-spiritual life—i.e. on how one takes it in. If one already has the mind to think it, then for them it is not a moral truth."

I guess I don't understand this then. Are you suggesting that "moral" only kicks in as a guide to action when one stands in need of such guidance -- while, if one already holds to a particular moral precept naturally, as it were, then it's not a matter of being moral at all for that person at all but of just being as he or she naturally is? (But then if "moral" claims only matter when we are not naturally moral, can being naturally moral really be to be moral, e.g., is it morally good or right to be kind to another if one doesn't have to challenge one's other inclinations to do it?)

If a "moral truth" is some claim, assertion or statement (or belief about the way things are) that involves a moral precept (something we should generally do or not do, all else being equal), or just applies to the acts we are capable of performing (not sure which you mean), which we believe to be true, is this then just to say that that which we call "moral truth" -- true in a moral sense -- is just whatever we subscribe to?

If, for instance, we held the opposite, "thou shalt kill," would that be both a moral claim and true (and hence a "moral truth") just because we hold it to be so?

On what basis might we do that and would it matter what basis we invoked as underlying our reasons to act in that way?

If someone said to me, 'God tells me not to kill,' is that no different than when someone says 'God tells me to kill'?

Here is the problem as I see it: We want to know NOT just what anyone counts as moral in any given situation but why it is counted as that -- and whether or not moral claims can be thought of as being true or false at all? And if they can, what makes one true, another false, and, perhaps, another neither one nor the other?

It seems to me that, if we want to say something about the moral in a philosophical way, we have to do more than express our feelings about it or provide an aesthetic analysis of what it's like to make a moral claim. We have to say something which makes the activity of making moral judgments intelligible within the framework of making judgments generally.

Moral claims may just be expressions of a particular kind of feeling we have, possibly a function of the nature of the kinds of creatures we are or, possibly, a function of certain training/education we have been through in our formative years. But if so, philosophy ought to be able to make that clear. And if it is something more, as it appears when we rely on moral claims to guide our behavior or the behavior of others, if it is a judgment process driven by reasons, then we ought to be able to discover and establish the sort of reasons that work in a moral game.

I agree that this is a very difficult area to get clear on (assuming we are on the same page re: that), the issue of the truth capacity of moral claims very contentious and hard to clarify. But I don't think we get ourselves off the hook (and I mean myself here as much as anyone) by avoiding tackling the question of moral justification head-on. Either moral valuing works as advertised (it enables us to choose between right and wrong actions) or it doesn't. If it does, philosophy should be able to help us see how. If it doesn't, philosophy should be able to show that, too.

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reshef

12/26/2013 03:24:43 am

Stuart,

I believe we are not on the same page. Unlike what I think you think I’m doing, I’m not interested in finding in general what moral claims are or have to be. I’m really only trying to describe the grammar of a certain sort of claims, and certain sort of actions. This is a completely different project. I really meant it when I said that I’m not putting forward a view, but only describing a particular sense (particular kind of moral claims, particular kind of use of language). And presumably—and that’s what gives this investigation its depth and interest—this sense involves particular kinds of reason-giving, particular kinds of truth or falsehood, particular kinds of normativity, particular kinds of behavior guidance, particular kinds of education, particular kinds of disagreements, and so on. I’m interested in describing all that.

As a result of that, for instance, when you claim: “We want to know NOT just what anyone counts as moral in any given situation but why it is counted as that,” I say: “That’s great. But before I can take another step with you, I need to first know what it means to ‘count something as moral.’ And I don’t. And I need to know what it even means ‘to give reasons in morality.’ And I don’t. And I probably will end up needing much else too. Before I have a good enough grasp on that, I won’t be in a position to even understand your claim and project—much less agree or disagree.” – So I’m not on the same page. You moved on. I’m stuck behind.

It seems to me that your project is based on the assumption that you already have answers to all the questions that I’m interested in: that you already know the grammar of morality, and are safe to move on; at least you are clear about what the options are. You seem to know, for example, enough about what giving moral reasons is or could be, and in what possible senses moral truths could be regarded as ‘truths,’ and what possibilities there are for something to be moral education. And so on. You know enough to ask questions that assume all this is understood. At any rate, your project as you described it may begin only AFTER the grammar of morality has been more or less settled. And I’m not there.

You then seem to be misreading what I say by assuming that I’m also taking the grammar of moral thought and action for granted—that I’m on the same page with you. This may explain why you keep reading me as putting forward a “morality is what we say it is” view. But I’m not on this page.

Clarification: You seem to have in mind a dichotomy. You seem to think: “Either we have reasoning and normativity and truth and so on in ethics, or it’s just a matter of feeling—either it’s objective or it’s subjective.” And since you (correctly) identify that I don’t take the first option, you assume I’m taking the second. – Because you already know the options. But I’m taking neither. And the reason why I’m taking neither is that I don’t yet understand either option. I’m not in a position to take either. ‘Reasoning and normativity and truth, and so on’ might for all I know have very different forms in ethics than they have in science, for instance. So I can’t take for granted that I even know what it means for there to be ‘reasoning… and so on’ in ethics. And I similarly cannot take for granted what it means for ethics to be a matter of feeling. And since I don’t understand that yet, and since I don’t even know the options, I’m not in a position to make claims about morality that assume I do. For example, I can’t make programmatic claims such as “either morality is objective or it is subjective” because I don’t even know if there is such a distinction when it comes to morality—or if there is, what form it takes.

And again, my project is really not very general. It is not to describe the grammar of moral language as a whole—as if there is just one kind of language game here. I think I can safely say there are many. And that means that ‘counting things as moral’ may mean different things in different cases. And ‘giving a moral reason’ may be different things in different cases. And it may mean that there are many distinctions between objectivity and subjectivity. All I was trying to do is partially characterize one of those ways of thinking and acting. It really is very different from what I feel you are taking me to be doing.

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Stuart W. Mirsky

12/26/2013 12:59:03 pm

Reshef,

I guess you're right and our projects are just very different. Good luck with yours then.